Boat Seat Repair Tutorial

[Music] [Music] so appreciate you guys tuning in this is phil with alien car care what we're gonna try to do today is show you guys a little bit of how vinyl uh or leather boat seat repairs could work and what this is is is this is a classic classic scenario of a pontoon boat seat um and it's been removed from the boat obviously so what we're thinking we're going to do today is is a classic example of boat seat repair stitch work we have two different panels of vinyl that basically um they've been a little bit weathered the thread is starting to get uv deteriorated but the good news is is that the vinyl itself is still in good shape now this vinyl here is actually just starting to wear a little bit and if the camera wants to zoom in a little bit on that so these guys are much much much less um deteriorated than i've seen i've seen ones that they start cracking way out this vinyl is still soft and supple i think it's fine it starts to get stretched over time that's normal people stepping on it skiers and swimmers stepping on your boat seats getting out jumping in the water it does happen there's nothing you can do about that we can however fix this seam here fix that thread there i think the thread has started to get deteriorated perhaps from uv but the fact that the um the vinyl itself is still soft and pliable we can work with it no big deal we don't have to recover and this is a great option for those of you wondering alien car care does this all the time alien car care specializes in in small leather blemishes leather cracking um spot blending or dye work for an area of wear and tear on your on your interior of your car on your boat your motorcycle heck i've worked on quad seats this could be even be applicable in rvs this could also be applicable in um like you know a harley seed or something leather or vinyl both both either or so without further ado we're just going to go ahead and get started i think i'm going to pick probably a kind of a vanilla colored here just somewhat matching the threads that's there you're only going to see a little bit when i'm done you should only see you know the little bit in between the seam when i'm done and when i finish it up it should be snug it won't be perfect but it'll be it'll be better so that's what we're going for i never ever use the word perfect that's a bad word to use don't use the word perfect people's expectations tend to go way up and you just you know it's not good aunt you just don't want to do that we like to under promise over deliver that's what we do with alien car care because i'd much rather set expectations properly and blow you away then set expectations real high and then all of a sudden you're like well you told me it was going to be perfect nobody likes that so um what i like to do in this i'm just going to do a normal stitch in this one i could do what's called a double blind stitch and a double blind stitch is when you have two needles and you cross over threads and you cross over threads and you cross over threads and you can do a whole entire area and do a double blind stitch i could do that here i'm going to try with a normal stitch and here's why because there's perforated holes already perfect that will hold the thread they're already there so all i have to do is retrace what was already there and if you're clean you're tidy and you're neat and you know you're not too abusive and rough like anthony is then you'll probably have a much better finished product you know you can't be you can't be clumsy you got to be you got to be [Laughter] you got to be you got to finesse man finesse gotta have lots of finesse so uh i think i'm going to i like to snip off a section of line here and again we're gonna try this if i don't like this i'll go to the double blind switch but i'm gonna try this first [Music] and anth i know this is important you're listening to this too this could be one of our tutorial videos could be an instructional video for team members like yourself or those of you who want to work with alien car care we'll hire you if you've got skills to pay the bills so we're going to good thing my eyes are still good today some days are not so great you know it's like it's like old age it just comes in increments you don't know all of a sudden you wake up one day and you're like what the heck i could see that yesterday and today i'm like i'll be out on a river and i'm trying to tie a fly knot and i'm like so we're good today eyes are working great focal's working great it's because i ate my carrots you know what carrots are good for anthony you're writing this in your eyes so there's just a little little knot there we like to have fun on alien carcass what we do little senses of humor you know it's important makes work day go by right right brando yeah yeah [Laughter] so we're gonna we're gonna try here to start and what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna try to bring it up in a hole bring this little needle through one of the the already set holes and this is a pain man i'm not gonna lie like like for real this is can be such a pain trying to find around in the vinyl move your fingers around and then kind of find the tip of the needle [Music] boom got her and we're going through there like that it's just nice and just keep it gentle and then i'm gonna go directly across the way here what i mean by that directly across the way there's there's perforated holes directly spaced out perfectly so if i stay with them as you can imagine this is a very tedious process it's very time consuming hence the reason we charge the way we do when we do these kind of repairs how many people want to do this but if you're good you're kind of artistic they're fun and all i'm doing and and again this wouldn't even be see how i have to stretch that vinyl right there this wouldn't even be possible if your vinyl was dry rotted because guess what it's going to do when i go to pull on the holes rip and that's no good oh i just noticed something right away i'm glad i did let this be uh let the wise men hear those who have ears let them hear as jesus would say he who has ears let him hear so i went in across and i actually have to go to the one that already has a thread in it directly across the way does that make sense anthony no for real no it's fine each thread has a it's right across so like each dot has a corresponding one across from it so you want to go across so i started with a big knot yep and that knot provides the the stopper or the end so it doesn't keep pulling the thread doesn't keep pulling through i don't know what the right terminology is for that so now so imagine me doing that repeating that you know 200 times yeah i know right but what's good about these is when you get a tiny little needle i don't because i don't have to do the double blind stitch boom i can start doing that it was a pain to get started but they usually flow a little bit easier but you don't want to let and boom see how that'll snug up tight so if i'm going to keep doing this but you got to but you got to correct you got to auto correct as you go along every every half inch or so because if you try to tighten it up when it's all the way back here you could end up with slack and looseness and wrinkles and it won't line up just perfectly you know i'm saying you know i'm saying yo so we are now working our way along here all those diy people that want to try to do it yourself you know i won't be bitter you can go ahead and you can try to do that on your own when you mess it up i'm going to charge you twice as much do it but some of you are going to ace it and you'll do great and then if you need a job come see us we'll hire you because not everybody wants to sit here and play around with this although some of y'all just like watching just oh that's neat i've always wondered how that was done oh there we go perfect sir you're like the assistant to a surgeon can you please grab me my scalpel and sponge no i'm just kidding can you grab me my dental hook you know the little orange with a little that's a fantastic tool if you don't have one of these you need to get one of these you know what i'm saying you need to get one of these right dang it these guys are taking ah i tell you these kids man kids these days brando kids it should be in there and it wasn't there young man so once again you all better find it these things do not leave their intended places without being put back otherwise heads roll baby heads roll hey now where was was in there the whole time dental right there this is a perfect tool so you take this and once you start and these are not these are not crazy expensive this is like harbor freight or something but it's a handy tool because i can start and i can come back here don't get too far i can start correcting see what i'm doing and you want it and you want to assist the vinyl you don't want to just use the thread this is very very important folks you don't want to just use the thread to try to pull itself together you'll stretch the holes you'll get wear and tear see how i'm using my fingers here i'm bringing the seam together sometimes some people will use a tool for that as well but and then i can get it to do that and as if i sit here and i carefully i'm gonna have surgeons hands here you won't be it won't be a night after drinking anthony okay it's not a night you want to do that as a night after drinking this would be bad in the end don't cool joe joe's not here [Music] these are one of the easier vinyl repairs we do here at alien car care man we've seen some nasty cracks and things that we have to use a repair compound in and we have to use a patch or we leather is nice because it's usually it's longevity it lasts longer it's very very durable however while vinyl cannot often be brought back once it gets too dried and cracked leather sometimes can you can recondition it we use different number of products for cleaning and leather we like we like lexal it's ph balanced for leather cleaner i think i like uh horse saddles or baseball gloves motorcycle seats uh you know automotive seats bmw some of these some of these older makes and models if you don't condition the leather and stuff this these threads will start to crack sooner these threads everything will start to dry dry out and it'll start to spread out and migrate on you but with the uv damage and it'll get brittle get hard the leather will get real hard and not pliable that's why we recommend conditioning or just bring it here to alien car care we'll detail it and it's always included conditioning your seats a lot of people don't think about that and you do actually have to do that with vinyl sometimes especially when it's sitting out in the sun all the time for this reason we highly recommend one of our products uh like ceramic coatings for boats this boat is this is an older seat and this thing is probably i think i said earlier this may be a 10 15 year old boat seat it's actually in really good shape uh it's nice it's squishy it's still got it's it's still got its softness to it it's not nasty so he's covering it or he's got it under a you know a dry dock or something but what a lot of people do is they they put them out they set it and forget it and they just they just leave their boat out there and it's like years go by and next thing you know they come out and they're like oh i don't know what's going on with the boat it's you know the seats can you do anything with it it's so far gone at that point you just gotta recover you gotta reupholster the whole boat now you're now instead of you know a typical repair costing 150 for labor or something now you're talking thousands if you got to recover your boat i mean even if i had to recover just one seat it might be three four hundred dollars i i don't know but somewhere in that range we don't do reupholstery here at alien car care just for the simple fact that it's a different animal it's a different beast and one of the things that happens often when we get asked this question very common question actually alien car care do you guys do reupholstery and so what we're always trying to do is gauge how bad is the repair can we do it or does it just need a whole new cover we can buy covers and install them we don't have the this is where it turns into a different animal we don't have the different um mic check one two one two we don't have the different sewing machines and tooling and and and rolls of vinyl and rolls of fabric that you know upholstery shop it requires like a whole different area and a different shop or whatever that we just don't have room for a time so we've never taken that on it's kind of a different beast it's kind of like we do certain automotive repairs here and we do a lot of cosmetic not mechanical a little caveat to that do a lot of automotive cosmetic repairs and people are always asking about bodywork and we do minor body work all the time and we'll replace a panel and we'll we'll do things like um you know sand and paint a bumper but we and we'll even knock out some dents on a fender paint a door deer damage but major collision is a whole nother set of tools much like major reupholstering is a whole different set of tools when you talk a major collision you're talking frame straighteners and and um you know now you're getting the radiator supports and broken headlamps and things that require some calibrating and things it's a different animal so we don't do major collision work here at alien car care either much for the same reason [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] we are wrapping this up just finalizing our gargantuan tear that was from here to here this is looking okay it's not my favorite but the reality is is these holes are a little bit stretched and so now the thread going through there it's not as clean as one of these as a machine thread but nonetheless the seat will stay together if you didn't know it was there and long term it should hold up really well i never recommend people's heels stepping hardcore into their boat seats because you can have things like this happen and then their seams separate so i'm just wrapping it up finishing up the last final couple holes here so when i'm finishing these last couple holes here i'm going to overlap a little tiny bit i want strength right in the last couple holes here and i don't want these to have any problem so what i like to do is i like to bring it overlap a couple and then go down and back out through previous threads and make sure that um it's less chance of it pulling if you're going back down and i can actually go go in and out of a couple of these holes so it becomes like a knot there's a some people are better at finishing this maybe than i am but this has always worked for me i don't ever have them give out i don't know there's probably a nicer cleaner way to do it but it seems to work okay for me um carefully just finding an exit the exit wound right there and then you kind of pull that tight nice and tight just tight like a toy gun then you go in here so overlapping a couple of these bad boys a little bit trying to keep that nice and clean and then what i can do is i can come back and i can snip it carefully you know cut the vinyl and i also like to clean my threads a little bit so after i've taken i've taken that knot i've pulled in the thread and and double backed on itself a couple times and i weave it again so that it doesn't pull out on accident um a lot of times what i like to do is make sure that i take a lighter and i hit any frayed thread sometimes we'll get frayed threads on some of these and i like to just singe the thread so that they're not kind of deteriorating and they're waxy interiors for them to melt really easily so i am wrapping up here with this second boat seat that my uh right hand man here was helping me with my student and as we finish these boat seat repairs it's really important to remember the quality of the vinyl matters the uh the flexibility the pliability all that stuff on whether you're going to try this this is actually very easy uh stitch work that we're doing here this is just following the holes that are currently here however sometimes we can do double blind stitches we can do other type of stitches we can cover those in other videos thank you very much for tuning in this is phil with alien car care we look forward to seeing you again [Music] soon you

Channel: Alien Car Care

Views: 3,664

Rating: 4.7777777 out of 5

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Id: X4r5urxS2DU

Length: 22min 4sec (1324 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021